Every Other Saturday
by Chinaberry
Summary: The house-elves at Malfoy Manor do an exceptional job of waxing the hardwood floors, you see. Cute Scorpius-and-Astoria-and-Draco-family stuff. RECENTLY CLEANED UP.


A/N: Haven't written in a while, at least not fanfic. Inspired by rereading Deathly Hallows, and also a picture by Makani. It was of Narcissa tickling a very young Draco, but I liked the idea. I just think the Malfoys are a lot more affectionate than people give them credit for, especially in light of Rowling saying Draco was "sobered" by the war and that Scorpius would likely end up an improvement on him. So this happened.

Not that it matters, but I see Astoria as blonde, both out of narcissism (I am blonde) and just out of the urge to imagine every member of that family as towheaded.

EDIT: Cleaned up a little. Just smoothed some things, reworded awkward bits.

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A small figure in a nightgown stole through the East wing, the early morning light glowing softly on her fair hair. The flagstone floor was not yet warmed after the night's chill, so though sun spilled across her feet, her toes felt numb. Most of the portraits in this hall were still asleep, and those who were not had no care for the doings of this woman—only the latest in a centuries-long line of ladies of the house, all of whom had passed before them at some time or another, and some of whom had even gone on to hang upon that very wall. She turned a corner, opened an ornate door, and poked her head into a sumptuously-decorated room. The little shape beneath the green coverlet stirred, and a gentle smile spread across the woman's finely-crafted features.

She laid a hand on her son's small face and bid him wake up, grinning mischievously.

"House-elves did the floors last night."

It was all she needed to say. The five-year-old boy in silk pyjamas was awake in an instant, face bright and eager. He pushed the duvet aside and leapt out of the bed.

Mother and son were silhouetted on the paintings and tapestries and ancient stone walls, hands tightly joined as they snuck down the hall. The sound of conspiratorial giggles burbled and echoed up to the vaulted roof. Both crept back the way the woman had come, and the boy followed her into another magnificent, shadowed bedroom. He had to clap his hands over his mouth to keep from laughing. Throwing a furtive glance at the man in the bed, the woman pointed her wand at the drawer. She opened it, summoned two pairs of her husband's socks and, pushing her son out of the room, cried, "go!"

The man in the bed raised his own fair head, as light as the boy's but graying now, threw a lazy glance at the two silhouettes in the doorway, and then went back to sleep.

Mother and son fled to the portrait hall, lined with slowly-waking ancestors—most rolled their (predominantly grey) eyes in disapproval. They pulled on the socks, which were overlarge, woolen, and probably hideously expensive. Testing the freshly-waxed hardwood floor with one foot and judging the effect satisfactory, she assured her son's safety with a few muttered enchantments. Finished with his socks, he looked to her.

A nod and a grin later, he was off down the hallway at a run. He tensed for just a moment, spreading his arms and legs wide, and was suddenly gliding and screaming with laughter and disturbing the portraits who were still asleep. His mother followed shortly behind, scooping him into her arms after he had slowed down and begun to wobble precariously. She underestimated her momentum, though, and both tumbled to the floor immobile with laughter.

The man with the platinum hair leaned against the archway, smiling softly. His wife gestured to him with one hand, her other arm busy containing her squirming son. Her infectious smile and riotous laughter invited him more than her hand; he joined the fray on the hardwood floor, elegant hands tickling and low voice laughing in a rare moment of open affection. At breakfast, mother, father, and son could not meet gazes for fear of laughing.

Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy would grow up knowing Malfoy Manor not as a place of cruelty and of fear, but as one of laughter and of love. He would not know the horrors the house had seen, only that here was the place that his family lived, where his parents loved each other and him, and where, every other Saturday, when the house-elves waxed the hardwood floors, he slid down hallways in his father's socks.


End file.
